There was something to be said about the light.
It was sort of terrifying, the thought of having every last organ exposed, having people see them raw and cold and laid out on the slab. But that was the way it always went. Cold air. Icy touches. The instruments were shiny and sharp and cut through them like butter. Their insides were too dark, too cool, too sticky with clotting blood. They always got to them before they were bloated. Usually just after rigor set in. This was their job, after all.
This happened every week.
They would not know when death would claim them, exactly, but it happened so often that the fear had dulled down to a nauseating apprehension.
They would proceed through life quietly and as happily as they could, but then, eventually, it would be an icy Wednesday afternoon and they’d find themselves pinned beneath the too-hot, panting form of a werewolf. Teeth yellow, drool against their skin, and then those fangs (ones they studied in class, ones that were not supposed to belong to beasts this far in the city) would be digging into their throat, giving, taking, ripping away the life from their body as they kicked and screamed.
It happened all the time. They would be dead, as physically dead as any other lycanthrope or car crash or murder victim, but they would still be in there, in most senses of the word. Trapped in their cocoon of meat and sinew, dripping cooling blood and covered in bruises. Sentient, but only partially feeling. Un-moving. Cold.
Then the autopsy.
These were things they’d also studied in class. Things they’d be tested on soon enough.
Cutting and opening and draining – gross, felt gross and sounded gross but there was nothing they could do about it; and then they’d be refilled with preservatives, formaldehyde, stapled back together all nice and cozy. It would do them well to remember the steps, even as they were performed on their unmoving body.
Next day. Thursday.
They were in bed, a little sore but otherwise unbroken. Perfectly fine.
The test would go well.
They’d visit the morgue on an internship, find themselves looking over the bodies of people in the same position they’d been in before. Bloodied and battered, some of them, whereas others would show no outward signs of suffering. By that point, they’d felt both sides of the coin, and weren’t sure which one was more unpleasant.
Not a lot of their situation made sense, but it grew easier to deal with as time went on.
Car accident. Ambulance. Alone in the room, and then the light: exposing, bleaching. Revealing each flaw, each freckle and stretch mark and scar. They’d be catalogued like an exhibit, forced to hear their statistics each time they died. Feel the dull tug of scalpels and staples and tubes.
The morticians would make jokes. It was alright – they did the same when they were doing autopsies on other corpses. Jokes helped you get along through this kind of morbid work. They’d come to know their colleagues quite well by now.
The one with the moustache had a newborn daughter named Emily. The pretty girl with the red hair was in her fifth year of medical school. There were a number of other students that had seen them over and over, although none of them ever seemed to realize they were viewing the same corpse they’d examined before, or that it belonged to the person that sat beside them during lectures. The person who helped with their work on other days.
It was alright. Even when they found themself face-to-face with their own body. Even when bile rose in their throat as they recalled each moment of the violence that had befallen them the night before – when they answered the questions before they should’ve been able to at that point in the process.
Their classmates and mentors did not note the similarities or their nervousness and, well, of course they wouldn’t.
The person on the examination table was not similar looking in the least, even if their own certainty was so crystalline it made their throat close up. Even if the injuries were identical to those they’d felt, even if the team working on them was the same as it had been last night, minus one.
They left the facility, when the work was done.
Went home.
Went to bed.
Woke up the same person, just like every other day – even if this time they weren’t sure what exactly that meant.
My name’s Slim and I just want to thank everyone for reading!! <3
I’m a 20 year old agender friend, planning on majoring in Journalism and working on a book about my dear necromancer boyo Jim and the overarching supernatural world he lives in with his best buddy, Tucker, an immortal monster hunter. I live with my girlfriend, Ali, (the one who started this ‘verse in the first place lol) and our cat, Krunchy, and spend most of my free time writing pretty gross stuff like this.
If you liked this story and want to see more of my writing (or just the things that I like and how I’m doin’) you can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @
striderfvcker.tumblr.com (usually sfw but please be cautious – all my fanfiction is 18+ unless it states otherwise!)
twitter.com/striderfvcker (this is mostly just personal stuff!)
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